On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 08:15:09AM +0200, Newton, Philip wrote: > Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: > > Most people can be bothered to make sure that their zones > > are RFC compliant. Most people who can't are spammers. (Note > > that I said most). > > That reminds me of a question I had. > > Can someone tell me who should be responsible for generating a Message-ID > header in email? Specifically,
answers based on re-reading the message below > * should the MUA generate the header when it sends the message to an SMTP > server? not sure. (I believe that the it's preferable that someone out of the MUA and the first MTA to do it, but I'm not sure which is best) > * if it does, should/may the server overwrite that header with > its own message ID? believe no > * if it doesn't, should the server generate a Message-ID header > of its own? I read it as it "may" if it's not a relay > * must an RFC-2?822-compliant message contain a Message-ID header? don't know > Then I got a complaint about a message of mine not having a Message-ID > header, and I found that my client apparently does not generate such a This may not directly have been what you were mentioning (or it may have been exactly the case you were mentioning), but I actually asked Ask about why I'd ended up with a message you'd sent to 2 perl mailing lists ending up in my inbox twice with two different message IDs assigned to it by the local MTA. Strangely enough, my de-duping filter uses message IDs, and it thought these were 2 messages :-) > previously most-often-used SMTP server did). When I talked to the chap > running the service, he seemed to think it's the client's responsibility; I > can think it would be a good idea if the server added necessary headers that > are missing (I've seen that done with 'Date:', for example, when I telnet > directly to port 25 and only supply From: To: Subject:). > > What would you say? Message I sent to Ask, which I didn't act any further on: | On Sun, Aug 12, 2001 at 03:20:13PM -0700, Ask Bjoern Hansen wrote: | > On Sun, 12 Aug 2001, Nicholas Clark wrote: | > | > I think that you are right; I don't think qmail adds the Message-Id | > if it's not there. | > | > Where does the RFC say that you must do that? | | Bluurg. I'm wrong. It doesn't say "must", it says "may": | | The following changes to a message being processed MAY be applied | when necessary by an originating SMTP server, or one used as the | target of SMTP as an initial posting protocol: | | - Addition of a message-id field when none appears | | - Addition of a date, time or time zone when none appears | | - Correction of addresses to proper FQDN format | | The less information the server has about the client, the less likely | these changes are to be correct and the more caution and conservatism | should be applied when considering whether or not to perform fixes | and how. These changes MUST NOT be applied by an SMTP server that | provides an intermediate relay function. | | (that's 2821) | And I'm not sure if a mailing list is "an intermediate relay function". | | It seems that I should be asking Philip Newton (and Tels) to rejig their | mail clients to generate Message-Id headers, rather than wonder why the list | isn't adding them. | Nicholas Clark
